Acoustic properties and geographic variation in the vibratory courtship signals of the european chloropid fly,Lipara lucens meigen (Diptera, Chloropidae)

Abstract

Geographic variation in courtship vibratory signals inLipara lucens from 7 disjunctive European populations were examined. Simple female responding signals showed significant interlocal difference in the pulse-group intervals only in the English population. More differentiated male courtship signals were separated into anterior “preliminary vibration” and posterior “main vibration”. The latter, composed of a train of bursts, showed significant differences among populations in the number of pulses in a burst, burst duration (BD), burst interval (BI) and burst period (BP). Latvian, Hungarian and Bulgarian populations had more pulses in a burst than those of E. Germany, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and England. Latvian and Bulgarian populations showed significantly larger values of BD, whereas that of Belgium showed a significantly smaller value. BI in the English population had the smallest value, and those in the Latvian and Bulgarian populations had the longest values. No significant differences were observed in BD and BI between E. Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Multivariate statistic analyses on the time-amplitude variables of the male signals showed uniqueness in the Belgian, English, Latvian and Bulgarian populations. Genetic background of the geographic variations in the vibratory signals are discussed in this context.